Small sword hanging at my side. The combatant can look just as fine on the field as the weapon can at their side.

Rule 3 Of Combat Sport Is The Most Important (HEMA, Martial Arts)

Look Good Doing It.

Some years ago I came up with a broad overview of the elements of a fight, of the things that are most important when you’re engaged in a combat sport of some sort. These became known as The Three Rules.

They’re nothing all that new but I’d never heard anyone talk about the fight that way. So I coined them and use them for teaching martial arts all the time. Thing is, they’re useful for more than just martial arts. Anyway, that’s not what this is all about. This is about Rule 3 and why I think it’s the most important part of the Ruleset. I also provide some practical advice about how to train so that Rule 3 becomes your normal rather than your occasional way of being.

The Rules

First, an overview of The Rules and their importance. I call them simply Rule 1, Rule 2 and Rule 3.

Rule 1: Don’t get hit.

Rule 1 is really what the fight is all about, from a survival perspective. The goal, whether it’s for sport or in earnest, is to avoid being hit. It’s pretty simple.

Now I know that sometimes you sacrifice a non-threatening hit to achieve a greater one, if your purpose is sport. But generally, the best thing to aim for is to not be hit.

This is done in three basic ways.

1. Void
   To void a blow is to completely get out of the way of it and in the process invalidate that strike. If the opponent swings a punch, a sword or a staff at you, you simply are not there when it arrives. This can be done by stepping back with a slip, by ducking and weaving, or by stepping to the side. There are plenty of other ways to move your body such that you void their blow. When you effectively void a blow, you are not where the opponent thought you would be when their strike reaches its target position.
2. Choke
   To choke a blow is to stop the blow before it reaches full or effective velocity. In this case, you may lift a shin to stop a kick, step in close and grab a wrist or an upper arm on the biceps brachii before it has a chance to pick up momentum or press your weapon’s blade down against your opponent’s before they get it up to a fighting position. To choke the blow is to keep them from being able to produce an effective attack.
3. Block
   The block, by my definition, is when the opponent has managed to effectively execute their strike, to the point that it would present a real threat to you. You simply must defend yourself. You do this by putting something in between you and their weapon, in a way that doesn’t deliver effective harm to you. In mid-close range, it may mean you execute a down block to stop a roundhouse kick, or get both forearms up in front of your face to defend against a punch to the face, or get your sword into a hanging guard that blocks their horizontal strike to your torso.
4. Redirect
   A redirect is something of an anomaly. It may even be a false category. I don’t mind. It helps me to teach stuff, so I use it. It can be a combination of a void, a block and/or a choke. A redirect is where you engage the opponent’s momentum — whether it be the momentum of their enture body or the just the momentum of their weapon — and redirect where it travels. It uses my overarching principle of work with not against. Use what they give you and redirect it to somewhere else, away from you, so that you can then bring an effective counter strike to them. If you are experienced in close grappling or winding at the blade, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. Redirecting a blow is a really simple, energy efficient process. Instead of trying to stop their full momentum, you allow them to keep moving but simply apply enough force to help them change their trajectory.

If you don’t get hit, you can keep the engagements going. You have another opportunity to win the bout and you haven’t been hurt in the process. Go you.

Rule 2: Hit your target

Rule 2 can be seen as the goal of the fight. I mean, you need to survive, so Rule 1 allows you to do that and even to come out on top as you do. But Rule 2 is the goal of your offensive actions. When you strike, you want to hope you hit your target.

This embodies a number of important concepts, listed below.

1. Martial intent
   If you’ve spent any time with me learning some kind of martial art, especially over a number of sessions, you’ll know that I am extremely passionate about martial intent. Martial intent can be defined as making every single strike count, as if you are actually trying to hit your target. It is, in essence, Rule 2. If you are not engaging with your opponent with martial intent— whether it is a friendly practise exercise or a competition for points — then you proabbly won’t succeed at making your techniques work.
2. Martial Intent
   If you’ve spent any time with me learning some kind of martial technique, you’ll know that I value martial intent above all else. If you are striking at the head of your opponent, then make sure you jolly well finish at the head of your opponent, or at least where they would have been had they stayed there (because if they’re worth their weight in salt, they will have effectively executed Rule 1 and not been hit). If you can’t work out why that joint lock doesn’t work, why that disarm doesn’t disarm or why that strike is too easy to counter, then the very first thing I will want you to do is line up your strike and show me that you are actually trying hit your target. Do it slowly. Do it deliberately. And do it every single time.
3. Martial Intent
   If you’ve spent any time with me trying to problem solve why a technique isn’t working, you’ll know that I value martial intent more passionately than anything else. I don’t care so much how long you’ve spent interpreting this or that technique, and I don’t place as much weight on your theorising and pondering and pressure testing the technique if it can be shown that you haven’t done it with martial intent— with the purpose of actually trying to hit your target in the attack. Why? Because it’s a martial art. You’re suppose to be hitting a target.
4. Making your opponent defend against your martial intent
   If you pose no threat to your opponent, and they have their wits about them, then they won’t see a need to defend against anything you throw their way. They’ll just void the blow and attack you, executing Rule 1 & 2 with finesse and winning the day. When you pose a threat, however, they must react to you. So make them have to react to you. Make them work for their own success. Hit your target.
5. Martial intent is not the same as distance but they’re both as important as each other
   When you engage your opponent, do you do so in a distance that threatens them? If you don’t, you won’t present a threat. So stop doing that. Move into distance.

Some people may like to tell me that Rule 2 doesn’t always apply, like when you do a feint. I disagree. Rule 2 says that you should hit your target — if the feint achieves that goal, then you have executed it with martial intent and success.

Rule 3: Look good doing it!

I’ll get into more detail with this one soon, but suffice it to say, Rule 3 is about how your body looks as you excute the technique. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t want to look fine as they execute their technique? Who doesn’t want to look at a video of themselves and think, “Gee, I did all right with that one”. Rule 3 is simple.

It’s also extremely important. You see, you can’t look good while you hit your target if you don’t possess practised control over your body. It is a skill and one you’ve practised again and again until your body does it without giving a thought to how you actually execute the skill.

The Importance Of Looking Good

I’m not talking about putting on your lipstick before you put in your mouthguard. I’m not talking about performing your movements in the arena in the same way you perform in your practise times. I’m not saying that the way you look when you perform a kata should be the same as how you look when you engage someone who’s trying to hit you in a tournament.

What I am saying is that when you aim to look good engaging an opponent — when you aim to move out of the way and hit your target and look beautiful at the same time — then you will be growing in your sense of motor efficiency. By becoming more efficient, you use less energy and by using less energy, you might just last longer. Anyone who works with elite athletes knows that a few hear beats per minute can be the difference between a win and a loss.

When you move with efficient beauty, you only use muscles when you need to. This means you can switch them on and off quicker, with greater precision. It means you may be able to defend against a blow quicker and with more accuracy than if you don’t move with such efficiency. You are able to transfer force from one part of the body to another with more speed, less energy leaks and to greater effect.

This means that you can both move better and think better. The time you spend not thinkng about movement is time you can spend focused on the internal elements of the fight. When you move well, you can think well, because you don’t have to spend time and effort trying to fix energy leaks and inefficient movements, and can just focus on your strategy and that of your opponent. This, in turn, means that you can increase your speed and reactivity because you’re not using up precious mental resources attending to sensory information.

I would argue that if your goal is to look good while you do whatever you’re doing, then you will do it better each time. You’ll become more efficient, less exhausted and more likely to achieve your goals. And you’ll be able to do it longer and at a higher intensity than if you don’t do it beautifully.

Basically, Rule 3 says that you must be appropriately conditioned and practised with enough progression from solo practise to dynamic freeplay, that you need not think about how to move, and that the performance of your skills seems almost effortless, or at least from those watching (you will still experience mental effort — decision making, resilience and other processes).

When you see athletes in other disciplines— sprinting, gymnastics, dance, baseball — if they are at the top of their game, they will look beautiful. They will look amazing. They will look like what they do is effortless and it will look pretty much the same almost every time they do it. There will be variance in their technique but overall, it will look distinctly their own more often than not. It need not be any different for the martial arts.

That training, however, the training to execute Rule 3 well, is something that develops slowly, over time. It requires gradual progressions in training and gradual increases in difficulty.

An important note

I am not saying that everyone who looks at you will think that you look like a master of your arts. What I’m saying is that you continue to progress in your beauty. If you have been training for a few months, then you would expect that compared to when you started, you now look more beautiful, more effortless, more fluid in your fight.

There is no absolute here, just the evidence of progress. How does your fight look compared to earlier this year? How does it feel to you? Does it feel less effortful to do the same intensity engagements for the same period of time? When you watch videos of yourself, do you look better and more fluid than you did last time? These markers are an important part of your experience and they may be unique to you.

The Objective Nature Of Rule 3

Rule 3 is both a subjective and an objective thing. It is subjective in that every body will have different capacities, ranges of motion, and skill levels, depending on a great host of things. How often do you train, what is the quality of your training, what other exercise do you do outside of your skills training, how skilled is your coach, what is your mindset as you train, what other physical skills have you learnt in the past, how well do you sleep? The list goes on. These things will mean that how you move can’t look like how someone else moves. Oh, there may be similarities, but you will have a unique movement pattern that has a unique version of “efficient” — unique to you. In this regard, Rule 3 is a subjective and personal experience.

It is also objective in several respects.

Each skill is composed of defined movements in a defined sequence

A skill is a given number of motor tasks performed in sequence. So for example, if you think about a karate front kick, there are certain movements that must be present in a given sequence for it to be defined as a front kick. Here is a potential list of movements that may be considered essential for a motor sequence to be considered a true “front kick”:

• Lift the kicking foot up to the level of the other knee
• Straighten the kicking leg forward (in the sagittal plane) while thrusting the foot forward toward the target
• Impact the target with the ball of the kicking foot
• Lean the torso back slightly as you perform the action in order to maintain balance

There may be other things that differ depending on your particular style. Regardless of the particulars, we can see that if these things are not performed, the kick may not be a front kick as such. If, for example, the kicker pivoted on their non-kicking leg and thrust the foot out while standing side on to their target, striking the target with the outside edge of their foot, then they would cease to be executing a front kick and would be executing something akin to a side kick. These are two distinct skills.

This is how we define a motor skill. Therefore, we can see that we can objectively define a complex motor skill based on whether the athlete executes each of these elements in the correct sequence. From this we can objectively rate their relative efficiency at performing the skill. For example:

• Is the athlete able to perform the sequence with greater speed and no loss of accuracy when we compare multiple trials of the skill over a period of months?
• When they perform the skill, do they demonstrate lowered heart rate as a result of exertion, when we compare multiple trials over time?

So, the first step in understanding Rule 3 objectively is to define the absolutely necessary elements of the different motor skills. Once you know what they are, you can track how well a person executes them based on the types of questions listed above.

The elements of a motor skill can be performed with varying quality

Once we have defined the individual elements of a motor skill, we can observe the quality with which each element is performed. We can observe that an expert in the skill will consistently perform it with certain characteristics that the novice will not possess.

In our example, the expert may be more likely to execute the kick with shoulders comfortably relaxed down while the beginner may kick with shoulders shrugged up toward their ears; the elite athlete’s spine may remain neutral from beginning to end whereas the novice athlete’s may be more likely to bend forward into flexion as they kick; the elite athlete may be more likely to kick with a narrow error range compared to the novice, who is more likely to vary where their foot lands with each kick. From this information, we can draw up a database of what an efficient and ‘beautiful’ motor skill looks like for this particular skill.

So from this we can draw up a list of the characteristics of this motor skill that are common among experts and novices and mark off the athlete’s performance when they execute the skill. We can then use this rating scale to determine how “efficient” their movement is and to track their progress over time.

Great Rule 3 results in less fatigue

This may be one of the most important reasons to work at Rule 3. When you can perform your skillset beautifully almost every time, then you are more efficient at using all the muscles and nerves involved in that skillset. This, in turn, means that you can perform the sequence with less effort, or less work. Less work uses less energy, which means you have more energy reserves left over. The end result of all of this is that your central nervous system, peripheral nervous system and muscles will be less fatigued. Lowered fatigue results in better control of your weapon, whether hands, feet or swords, which will mean less chance of injury to yourself. It also means less chance of injury to your opponent, because you’re able to control your weapon and avoid harming the opponent, if necessary, by slowing and halting any potentially dangerous attacks.

Fatigued muscles and nervous system are evidenced through a number of things. Here is a brief overview of those evidences.

Nervous system fatigue.
The nervous system is the central element of control in motor skills. What this means is that the nervous system is involved in deciding what to do, when to do it and where to direct it. It controls emotional reactions, thinking and decision making. Some ways in which nervous system fatigue is evidenced are listed below.

• Decreasing accuracy of strikes
• Slowed response time compared to earlier in the engagement
• Decreased ability to slow strikes down and change the direction of a blow
• Decreased balance
• Decreased agility
• Increased emotioanl reactivity — anger, frustration, tiredness, impatience
• Changes in galvanic skin response
• Changes in heart rate variability

Musclar system fatigue
The muscular system generates the actual movement of joints. It accelerates and decelerates the limbs, propelling the body thorugh space and executing the strikes, blocks and footwork requried to engage in the skillset. Some ways in which muscular system fatigue is evidence are listed below.

• Increased rate of ventilation (breathing heavily and/or faster)
• Slow movement of usually quick skills
• Decreased ability to defend against strikes
• Poor footwork compared to earlier
• Decreased accuracy of strikes
• Decreased ability to stop or change direction of strikes and weapons
• Deterioration in dynamic posture (perhaps increasing changes in shape of spine, position of head and shoulders when moving) and static posture (maybe more evidence of slouching and arching of lower back when standing still)
• Increased heart rate and taking longer to recover back to resting/standard exercise rate

Fatigue in both of these areas can be thought of as resulting in decreased control. The person will exhibit a decrease in control of thinking, decision making, emotional reactions, muscular accuracy, slowing limbs in motion, balance, footwork and breathing.

As you grow in Rule 3 — as you decrease the effort with which you perform your skills and the consistency with which you perform them — you will discover an ability to perform the skills better for longer. If your goal is to be as efficient and beautiful and fluid every time you perform these skills, then you will decrease the chances of exhibiting signs of fatigue — and more to the point, decrease the effects of fatigue. You’ll be able to enjoy your martial art longer and with less chance of injury to yourself and your oppponents and you’ll look good while you’re doing it. What’s not to love about that?

Rule 3 In Real Time

So, we can help someone to understand how much they have developed in their application of Rule 3 and whether they have grown in efficiency and beauty. The problem that we often encounter, however, is that people can perform a skill beautifully in isolation but when they get into the actual fray, they are no longer able to maintain their Rule 3ness (rule three-ness?). This is one of the most difficult aspects of learning motor skills. And I’d argue, it’s one of the most important to develop.

When you observe an elite athlete in another field — say, a basketballer — they will demonstrate a consistent shape in their body and a consistent accuracy in their skills throughout the course of a game. At any moment in time during that game, they may not look precisely the same as they do when practising during the week. But when they are in the game, in the middle of the fray, as it were, they demonstrate a consistently high level of skill throughout the game. So while they may not look as beautiful as when they practise, they do look consistently beautiful throughout the game and they look more beautiful than most people out on the street would when playing the same game.

This is because they have trained their body not just to execute the skills in isolation during training and when practising their dribbling and shooting skills but also during actual gameplay. This occurred over a period of many years, with great patience and repetition, with gradual exposure to more difficult scenarios.

In the case of martial arts, it is no different. The martial artist can also perform their skills in isolation, becoming beautiful in isolation. The next step is to perform those skills in sequence. Then to perform the skills in a sequence that’s unplanned. Then the final phase is to learn how to execute those skills in a real world, unplanned, unpredicatble and somewhat chaotic exchange typically konwn as a fight. Now, of course, a competitive or friendly bout is very different to a fight for survivial on the street — and this article is not about that. This is about competitive and friendly bouting in martial arts, whether as sport or simply recreation.

The act of engaging in a free exhange with another martial artist is a highly dynamic one. It’s not a formula of known decisions but a constantly changing interaction consisting of steady and chaotic states. In this dynamic environment, the martial artist must learn how to apply their learnt skills in an improvised context.

It’s important to understand that with the human body, what we train, we gain. So if you train skills in isolation, lacking martial intent and distance, then your body won’t know how to use those skills in the correct distance, with increasing complexity. It will get all confused and stop doing things efficiently and you’ll stop looking fantastic and start looking, well, not fantastic. Inefficient. Different to how you look when you train.

What we train, we gain

How can we develop a practical method of developing Real World Rule 3 (RWR3)?

RWR3 Step 1

Practise your skills in isolation to be beautiful. Just make sure that every single repetition is beautiful. There is no room for being lazy here or slacking off. Every single time you train, train with the highest quality in mind. Never train poor quality repetitions. If you are fatigued, slow down and don’t do as many.

Here are the main points:

• Make every repetition of the highest quality possible in that moment
• Learn to do them slowly and only do them faster as you’re able to do them with the same level of quality
• Don’t do as many or as fast when you’re tired or fatigued
• Less is more: Do less with higher quality rather than pumping hundreds and losing control of the quality

RWR3 Step 2

Use your newfound skills in dynamic but controlled engagement as soon as possible. That’s right. You read that right. Get out into the free bouting as soon as possible and use those skills.

But here’s the thing: Restrict yourself to the one or two skills you are currently working on. So when you engage with someone, you only use those one or two simple skills that you’ve learnt — nothing else. Constrain yourself, force yourself to react with precision and control.

Similarly, only enage extremely slowly and only increase the speed to the point where you can go a bit faster while still maintaining your quality and control.

I believe, at least when I watch people in martial arts, that this is one of the biggest errors they make in their training. In the rush to get the thrill of the fight, to get that adrenalin kick and the good feelings, people go too fast, too soon. They get out there and fight, fight, fight, all the while forgetting their technique. Then what happens is the body does far more bad repetitions than good ones. It wires itself, it learns that when you are engaging with an opponent, it’s okay to do the skills poorly, because when you practise your little play fights, you do them poorly. I see this so much it’s ridiculous.

Remember, with the body, what you train, you gain.

This is an extreme discipline. This is a deliberate choice you must make. If you want to have awesome Rule 3ness, you simply must discipline yourself to fight only the things you can do well, and to train them well. Otherwise, all that practise in isolation is worth very little.

Here are the main points:

• Use your new skills in a free engagement as soon as possible
• Only use those skills
• Only use those skills slowly
• Only increase the speed up to the point that you can use those skills as beautifully as when you do them in isoalation
• Only introduce new skills into the free engagement once you have gained a level of mastery of these ones that is full of Rule 3
• Exercise discipline and patience

RWR3 Step 3

Keep doing Steps 1 and 2 slowly, gradually and patiently. Add complexity only as you gain some level of beautiful mastery. What that looks like will be different for each person depending on their particular martial tradition, what it values, the individual’s goals, their coach, and a host of other things.

Learn to play with the techniques in motion. Adapt, become more random and always focus on slow, beautiful technique before fast and powerful. Control first, speed last. Gradually move from slow and controlled to free and fast, keeping check on your technique all the way through.

There is no quick fix here. You simply must practise Rule 3 every single time you’re practising it. The only time you don’t “try” to do Rule 3 is when you are competing in a tournament, for a grading or when the results of your fight count. In those cases, don’t worry — all of your patient practise, if done well, will have paid off and you’ll be Rule 3ing all over the place without even thinking about it. So when you’re in the moment, just do. When you practise, just practise.

Here are the main points:

• Keep doing RWR3 Steps 1 and 2
• Gradually introduce complexity only when you have gained adequate mastery
• You have to decide what adequate mastery looks like
• Don’t bother with trying to do Rule 3 when you’re in a tournament, grading or a bout that matters. In those moments, simply do the thing you have to do.
• Be very patient and be willing to take your time

Some Final Thoughts

Rule 3 really is the most important because it allows us to perform Rule 1 and Rule 2 with alacrity, finesse and efficiency. It helps to reduce the risk of injury and increase the enjoyment we gain from our times engaged against an opponent. Rule 3 also teaches us patience and to value the process rather than rushing headlong into the destination without actually learning all the things along the way that really matter.

The process of gradually introducing complexity is one that I hear a lot of people talk about but one that I don’t think many people actually follow. In our hurry to get good at something and experience the rush of sport combat we miss the high importance of training properly, efficiently and safely. Too many people are in a hurry to start fighting without learning how to actually do that. There is no reason why martial artists cannot be as beautiful when they compete as when they train, in as much as a chaotic tournament situation will allow you to look beautiful. Regardless, train to look beautiful and it will have a massive carryover into your performance when it matters. Which is to say, every single time you train and every single time you compete.

Finally, learn to enjoy the process, the journey, of learning that comes from this kind of practise. It’s a worthwhile study. Be patient with yourself, be patient with your training partners and have a long view of where you want to be. Don’t think about next week or the next month nearly as much as you think about what you want to be doing in 10 or 20 years time. Practise mindfully and don’t short circuit your learning by trying to keep up with everyone else or trying to master something new every single week. Our bodies just don’t learn like that.

In the meantime, enjoy your training!